ARTICLES ABOUT OAXACA BY DATE - PAGE 5

The races for control of Tijuana's City Hall and Oaxaca's governor's palace--both crucial to President Vicente Fox--appeared to be neck and neck as polls closed for elections across Mexico on Sunday. In Oaxaca state, television exit polls showed a virtual tie between Gabino Cue, a left-right coalition candidate with Fox's backing, and Ulises Ruiz, the candidate of the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in a contest marred by incidents of violence. In Tijuana, preliminary results showed Jorge Hank Rhon, an eccentric millionaire dog-track owner, running close with Jorge Ramos of Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, in the mayoral race.

Fernando Oaxaca, an entrepreneur who made inroads for Latinos in politics and business, wrote a current-affairs column, and helped found the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, has died of cancer at UCLA Medical Center. He was 76. Mr. Oaxaca, who died May 28, helped launch the Republican National Hispanic Assembly in the late 1960s to foster Republican principles among Latinos. A former Democrat, he joined the Gerald Ford administration in 1975 as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Olga Toro couldn't resist planting a few kernels of the corn she purchased at the government warehouse, even though it was intended only to help feed her family and her chickens. She was doing what Mexican farmers have done religiously for 6,000 years. She was experimenting with seeds in a tradition that helped create corn from a weed called teosinte and ultimately produced dozens of yellow, white, red, blue and black species that make Mexico the world's most important repository of corn genes.

The governor of Oaxaca state escaped with minor injuries Thursday after unidentified gunmen ambushed his car. Gov. Jose Murat came under fire in the state capital, Oaxaca, suffering minor injuries. He was treated at a hospital and released. Murat, 54, is a member of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades before it was ousted in 2000. Police said a bodyguard and a state police officer suffered more serious injuries.

Government negotiators said Monday that they have brokered a deal to end one of Mexico's thorniest land disputes by paying mixed-race ranchers and farmers to leave the land claimed by Indians. The dispute over the land in the Chimalapas region of southern Oaxaca state has lasted for almost 50 years, with both sides attacking, kidnapping and occasionally killing rivals. The Agricultural Reform Secretariat said it reached "a historic agreement" with hundreds of ranchers and farmers from the community of Colonia Cuauhtemoc voting to accept an unspecified amount of cash to give up their claim to the land, the government news agency Notimex reported.

The fight over globalization has a unique flavor under the stone arches around this majestic city's 16th Century plaza. When McDonald's proposed adding its golden arches and the smell of french fries to Oaxaca's historic square, protesters did not crash tractors through the front glass as farmers once did in France. They did not raise machetes over their heads as did protesters against a Costco bargain warehouse elsewhere in Mexico. Instead, they took to the plaza brandishing tasty tamales filled with shrimp and pumpkin seeds or a thousand combinations of other flavors.

Authorities arrested 16 suspects Sunday in the massacre of 26 mill workers on a remote road in southern Mexico, saying it had been an act of vengeance in a bitter, centuries-old land dispute. The massacre took place Friday night in rural Oaxaca state when attackers opened fire with high-powered weapons on a truck carrying workers, many of whom were teenagers. The workers had been returning to their homes in the village of Xochiltepec after a week of work at a sawmill. Some of the dead had been shot multiple times, some at close range.

By Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent. Carving out a living became a keen pastime for Manuel Jimenez, richly so, and his village has followed suit, writes the Tribune's Laurie Goering. Laurie Goering is the Tribune's senior Latin American correspondent | June 24, 2001

As a boy, Manuel Jimenez herded cattle, burros and goats through the dry rolling hills of Oaxaca state, helping his parents scrape out a living. In time, the animals "started to enter my dreams from heaven," he says--only in his dreams they were bright-colored marvels, covered in polka dots. Jimenez, then only 8, took up a machete and began carving the animals of his fantasies, painting them in a vivid purples and reds and blues. As he got older, he threw his creations in a sack and hiked through the hills to the city of Oaxaca, where he made his way up and down the streets, knocking on doors.

Otro Mas is scheduled to open Wednesday at 3651 N. Southport Ave. The restaurant will feature the same menu as Mas, the Division Street original, but expect more Mexican-style daily specials, reflecting the influence of Oaxaca-born sous chef Omar Mendez, who will be running the kitchen on a daily basis. 773-276-8700. Benny Sidhu has opened a second Volare; Volare II, however, is on Las Olas Boulevard in Ft. Lauderdale. Sidhu is also scouting Chicago locations for a more upscale Italian concept.

By James F. Quinn. James F. Quinn is a Tribune photographer who drags his cameras along on vacations, too | October 1, 2000

Whenever the music stopped, dancers would throw things at us from the stage-fruit, biscuits, shaggy straw hats. Outstretched hands reached to catch whatever loot soared up toward us in the 10,000-seat stadium above the Mexican city of Oaxaca. My brother-in-law grabbed at a flying pomegranate, but it slipped out of his fingers, splattering the white blouse of a woman two rows down. In the midst of the celebration they call la Guelaguetza, no one seemed to mind. Actually, we had come for the animals-wooden animals.